mendeleev

We fly to Siberia through Dubai. Our friends who have used Istanbul have experienced frequent, unacceptable changes in connection times that have interfered with originating flights in the interior of the USA needed to get to a Turkish Air US-based departure airport. Similarly, onward connections there have reported been sometimes unreliable. Dubai is more expensive. The international terminal is amazing. The terminal we use to fly to Russia less so. For us, layovers have gotten longer this year because number of flights into Russia have decreased. We fly in June/July/September and I can mention experience later.

Expobank, one of the banks we have used for Wire transfers, is now sanctioned by the USA and off-limits.

Wire transfers can work. Raiffeisenbank's parent bank in Austria has been under pressure by the US government and, as a consequence, now charges a prohibitive 50% commission for dollar transfers. So our son opened a euro account at Raiffeisenbank and we now transfer euros. Our brokerage firm (can I admit it is Schwab without violating TOS?) does the currency conversion for us. There are extra steps. Expobank is a Russian regional bank that allows dollar wire transfers. We also have an account there and transfers dollars to it. Fees on the Russian side at both banks are minimal. (They are lower than ATM fees charged by US banks to let us take rubles from Russian ATMs were in the "good old days". Schwab has a $15 wire transfer fee. ) These banks are under continual formal and informal pressure from western governments to stop providing service to customers and the situation changes from time to time. Now, many US banks refuse to send wires to Russia. I have heard (don't know if it is really true it since I don't have accounts there) that Bank of America and Wells Fargo refuse to wire customer funds to Russia. Fidelity wouldn't tell me if they would or if they wouldn't. I don't need Fidelity to do this right now, so didn't push the issue. Like I wrote, things change.

geekitana is right — last time i was there at least. It’s Russia, things change but fortunately don’t change

In March and April 2022, USPS, UPS, FEDEX, and DHL all stopped sending anything from the USA to Russia. This has nothing to do with the formal sanctions regime. We still have not found means of sending anything to Russia except asking relatives in Europe to intermediate or carrying it ourselves in luggage when we go there. The situation is analogous to VISA and Mastercard shutting down ATM access in Russia to US banks at about the same time, absent anything by governments compelling action at that time. There are still a couple large and many medium-sized banks in Russia that are not blocked by OFAC and remain able to receive US-originated wire transfers intermediated by SWIFT. This aspect of the situation is fluid and changes from time to time. These are elements of the economic blockade that catch folks like us in the middle. It is possible for Russians to send mail to us in the USA and they do get delivered.

The USA does require young men to register for military service and the legal framework remains in place in the USA to resume military conscription. Consequently, the argument went, the USA would not find an attempt to avoid national service abroad as a valid reason to acquire asylum. Back when the USA was sponsoring a war against a Marxist regime in Nicaragua, the USA nonetheless deported Nicaraguans who fled to the USA to avoid conscription. To my knowledge, US law on this topic has not changed.

Well, earlier this year, I got a homestay visa to return back to Russia. I am a US citizen. My sponsor is my wife, who has dual citizenship between Russia and the USA. The last half dozen, or maybe dozen, don't know and lost count, times I've been to Russia my wife registered me to stay in her flat. Well, there was one business trip where I was in her home town and she was in the States, but you get the idea.

We bought the books at kinga.com. That bookstore, which I think is based in New York City, is somehow able to import. Occasionally, the Russian grocery store near us gets shipments from Moscow too. I don't know how this works yet. Those among us who want, from time to time, to send items in have things to learn here. USPS doesn't ship to Russia -- although before the SMO our parcels all went through Dubai and air connections from Dubai to Russia multiply these days. But USPS claims, conterfactually, there is no possibility to send parcels there. This isn't a matter of formal sanctions but something else. We have been able to send clothing to grandchildren in Novosibirsk through Norway. Norway no longer does express mail to Russia either, so it just takes longer. But I have a relative living in Norway who intermediates.

Sorry for misunderstanding here. I'm not aware of services that ship books *to* Russia. Recently, my wife managed to order a couple of novels that were delivered from Moscow to us here in the States. It took about 3 weeks for those two detective stories to arrive. For us, it is a puzzle we'll have to solve at some point how to ship items to Russia.

My wife flew Emirates, Chicago/Dubai in late summer. Then overnight stay in Dubai (at quite reasonable cost, cheaper than many USA hotels) then Flydubai nonstop to Novosibirsk. The layover was short or long depending on your perspective -- 8 to 10 hours if memory serves. Just enough to lay ones head down to sleep in a comfortable hotel. The Chicago/Dubai flight is long. Avoid any but aisle seats. The ability to get to Novosibirsk in two hops was quite unexpected. The return was the opposite path but perhaps because the time was closer to the World Cup, the hotel price was higher. This worked very well. At the Dubai airport, one can buy a concierge service to meet the traveler at the gate, get bags, expedite passage through passport control -- the concierge doesn't need to wait in line -- and dropped her off at the taxi that I also reserved. The reverse also worked. Hospitality in Dubai for an unaccompanied woman was superb. We note that Jazerra airlines -- a Kuwaiti airline -- starts service between Kuwait City and Moscow. FlyDubai started Dubai/St Petersburg service in December. It looks like Arab airlines, seeing a business opportunity, start moving into the vacuum created by European withdrawal.